Wednesday, November 05, 2014

ACME Patented Costume Tomfoolery.

So y’all, we didn’t win the costume contest. But when you loose to this guy, it’s hard to be too hurt over it.

Groot had easily already spent a couple thousand of his $5000.00 grand prize on just building that costume, but holy cow was it impressive. He was on stilts of course, but what you can’t see from the picture are all the little details he included. There was a to-scale Rocket Racoon on his back in a fierce battle pose wielding a light up gun. His arms had blink-y lights built in so he could create the bio-luminescence look from the movie. And my persona favorite was the tube built into the “bark” of one arm that allowed him to “bloom" a small flower for ladies.

Good show, Groot man. Good. Show.

We of course, had our picture taken with him.

Oh yeah, and THOSE are our costumes.

Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote, at your service.

The Mister and I wanted something that would be easily recognizable but not something that everyone else was doing - we’d batted a few ideas around but nothing was really feeling AWESOME to me (and since I create those costumes, that’s important!) Then one day The Mister’s friend “threw him under the bus,” The Mister asked me for a cartoon to illustrate the concept of “bus-throwing” to said friend, and I used a Wyle E. Coyote cartoon for pose reference. Suddenly, Looney Toons provided the inspiration, and off to the races we went!

My dress is sewn from an old blue turtle neck and light blue fabric I found at a thrift. Both our tails, the "crest/ head feathers", his ears, his nose, and both sets of feet are upholstery foam that I shaped to give us cartoony expression before covering with fabric. Each of those pieces is attached to the main costume pieces by SNAPS, so I could remove them and throw the big costume pieces in the wash for multiple wearings.

Both masks (mine out of foam, his out of fleece) were created from scratch and painted to match our ensembles.

For accessories I made a sign for me ("Meep Meep!" on one side, "ROAD RUNNER (accerlarati incredibilius)" on the other) and an ACME rocket backpack out of an old protein powder container and rope for him (which doubled as our storage for the night since we didn't have pockets!) The Mister also had a t-shirt that I painted "COYOTE (carnivorous vulgaris)” onto underneath his coyote suit, so when he inevitably overheated and needed to unzip the top half, people would still know what he was supposed to be.

My favorite part of these costumes is my feet - I wore striped tights, then found a pair of wedge heels and sewed on fabric from another thrifted turtle-neck and upholstery foam to make me look taller, my legs look longer, and give me the bird toes the road runner uses to zoom into the sunset. I even painted stripes on them so you can't quite tell where the tights end and the feet pieces begin (hint, the joint is half-way up my knees)

I had a blast competing in the costume contest - judging took place by inviting all participants to walk around the perimeter of the casino floor. I caught on pretty quick that the people judging the costumes didn’t want to just see the costumes, they wanted to see you BE the costume.

I learned this from watching a man in the line ahead of us wearing only a crude diaper, sucking on a pacifier and dragging a blanket. (you may have noticed I did not mention he was wearing a shirt. He placed in the top 20 just by acting like… well acting like a baby. So I followed suit!

No, not by acting like a baby, but by insisting that the Mister follow behind me slowly, while I quickly zig-zagged back and forth on my spot in the line, stopping with sharp movements to consider the people around (and for so many of them to take pictures!). I MEEP’d at people who Meep’d at me. And I tried (mostly failed) to keep a straight face when people realized Wylie was behind me and either warned me to "look out!” or asked him what’d he’d do when he caught me. It was great.

So all in all, we didn’t place in the contest, but that’s okay, because the people that did, totally brought their A-game, and I feel like the effort we put in was still super appreciated.

Other worthy competitors.

Oh yeah, and THEN we got to watch THE VILLAGE PEOPLE. Who were fantastic! I was amazed at how many songs I knew from their set list, and also at the fact that all the members look so... good yet. That said, I don't know that the Native American member necessarily needed to wear the ass-less chaps and do all those spins up on stage. Woah.

How was your halloween?

Did you dress up?

TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS!

I would be remiss here if I didn't take a second to shout out to a brilliantly wonderful Mister - I'm fairly certain that having his wife stuff him in a onesie and parade him around all night wasn't as much fun for him as it was for me. But he played along beautifully.